Деница Минчева

→“Huxley, you’re in there, I hear you _breathing_!” cried the drunken voice.

→“Go away,” whispered Acton soundlessly, crushed against the wall.

→“Hey, in there!” cried a drunken voice. “I know you’re in there, Huxley! Open up, dammit! This is Billy-boy, drunk as an owl, Huxley, old pal, drunker than _two_ owls.”

→A long moment passed. Acton did not breathe. Without new air in his body he began to fail away, to sway; his head roared a silence of cold waves thundering onto heavy rocks.

→Someone rapped loudly.

→Acton froze, staring at the door, the clock, the door, the clock.

→The doorbell rang.

→He looked at the mantel clock. An hour gone. It was five after one.

→“What time _is_ it?”

→He came to another wall.

→He got one wall finished, and then …

→“Yes, one _must_ be certain,” he replied.

→But you must be certain, his thought said to him.

→“Ridiculous, oh my Lord, ridiculous!”

→Without a word he began to scrub the wall, up and down, back and forth, up and down, as high as he could stretch and as low as he could bend.

→He peered at his hand and the wallpaper. He looked over his shoulder at the other room. “I must go in there and polish the essentials,” he told himself, but his hand remained, as if to hold the wall, or himself, up. His face hardened.

→He turned angrily. “All right, all right, just to be _sure_,” and he went over and couldn’t find any spot. Oh, a _little_ one, yes, right – _there_. He dabbed it. It wasn’t a fingerprint anyhow. He finished with it, and his gloved hand leaned against the wall and he looked at the wall and the way it went over to his right and over to his left and how it went down to his feet and up over his head and he said softly, “No.” He looked up and down and over and across and he said quietly, “That would be too much.” How many square feet? “I don’t give a good damn,” he said. But unknown to his eyes, his gloved fingers moved in a little rubbing rhythm on the wall.

→Well, _wasn’t_ there?

→There was a spot on the wall behind him.

→“I refuse to pay attention,” he said to distract himself. “The next room, now! I’ll be methodical. Let’s see – altogether we were in the hall, the library, _this_ room, and the dining room and the kitchen.”